A Blog by the Editor of The Middle East Journal

Wednesday, August 14, 2013

Of the huge outpouring of commentary on today's events, some of the best and clearest analysis I've seen is from Essandr El Amrani at The Arabist:"It Only Gets Worse from Here."

I think he captures the zero-sum thinking we're seeing on both sides, in which neither side has really sought to find a middle ground. His analysis of the liberal predicament:

The fundamental flaw of the July 3 coup, and the reason those
demonstrators that came out on June 30 against the Morsi administration
were wrong to welcome it, is that it was based on an illusion. That
illusion, at least among the liberal camp which is getting so much flak
these days, was that even a partial return of the old army-led order
could offer a chance to reboot the transition that took such a wrong
turn after the fall of Hosni Mubarak on February 11, 2011. This camp
believed that gradual reform, even of a much less ambitious nature than
they desired in 2011, would be more likely to come by accommodating the
old order than by allowing what they perceived as an arrangement between
the military and the Islamists to continue. Better to focus on fixing
the country, notably its economy, and preventing Morsi from sinking it
altogether, and take the risk that part of the old order could come
back.

In this vision, a
gradual transformation of the country could take place while preserving
political stability through the armed forces. It would be negotiated
and hard-fought, as so many democratic transitions in other parts of the
world have been, but the old order would need the talent and competence
of a new technocratic, and ultimately political, class to deliver and
improve governance. Their hope was that the Islamists would understand
that they had lost this round, and that they could be managed somehow
while a new more liberal order emerged. This, in essence, was what
Mohamed ElBaradei and other liberals bought into on July 3, no doubt
earnestly, and what so many other outside of formal politics fervently
hoped for: not the revolution radicals want, but a wiser, more tolerant,
order in the country.

Unfortunately, among the broad liberal camp
in Egypt, those who entertained such hopes are in a minority. Even
among the National Salvation Front, as its obscene statement praising
the police today showed, most appear to have relished the opportunity to
crush the Muslim Brothers and appeared to believe that other Islamists
could simply choose to be crushed alongside it, kowtow to the new order,
or be pushed back into quietism. It appears that much of the business
and traditional elite – represented politically by the Free Egyptians
and the Wafd Party among others – falls into that category. They are
joined by the security establishment, or deep state if you prefer.

He doesn't excuse the Brotherhood:

An Islamist camp that, as
elements of it are apparently beginning to, sets fire to churches and
attacks police stations is one that becomes much easier to demonize
domestically and internationally. But it is also much more unpredictable
than Egypt's homegrown violent Islamist movements were in the 1980s and
1990s, because there is a context of a globalized jihadi movement that
barely existed then, and because the region as a whole is turmoil and
Egypt's borders are not nearly as well controlled as they were then (and
today's Libya is a far less reliable neighbor than even the erratic
Colonel Qadhafi was then.)

In their strategy against the July 3
coup, the Brothers and their allies have relied on an implicit threat of
violence or social breakdown (and the riling of their camp through
sectarian discourse pitting the coup as a war on Islam, conveniently
absolving themselves for their responsibility for a disastrous year) ,
combined with the notion of democratic legitimacy, i.e. that they were
after all elected and that, even if popular, it was still a coup. On the
latter argument, they may have gained some ground over time both at
home and abroad. But on the former, they got things very, very wrong:
their opponents will welcome their camp's rhetorical and actual
violence, and use it to whitewash their own.

I think he nails it pretty well here, and the growing dangers come, of course, amid a collapsed economy and a vanishing tourism sector. It may indeed only get worse from here.

"Michael Collins Dunn is the editor of The Middle East Journal. He also blogs. His latest posting summarizes a lot of material on the Iranian election and offers some sensible interpretation. If you are really interested in the Middle East, you should check him out regularly."— Gary Sick, Gary's Choices

"Since we’re not covering the Tunisian elections particularly well, and neither does Tunisian media, I’ll just point you over here. It’s a great post by MEI editor Michael Collins Dunn, who . . . clearly knows the country pretty well."— alle, Maghreb Politics Review

"I’ve followed Michael Collins Dunn over at the Middle East Institute’s blog since its beginning in January this year. Overall, it is one of the best blogs on Middle Eastern affairs. It is a selection of educated and manifestly knowledgeable ruminations of various aspects of Middle Eastern politics and international relations in the broadest sense."— davidroberts at The Gulf Blog

"Michael Collins Dunn, editor of the prestigious Middle East Journal, wrote an interesting 'Backgrounder' on the Berriane violence at his Middle East Institute Editor’s Blog. It is a strong piece, but imperfect (as all things are) . . ."— kal, The Moor Next DoorThis great video of Nasser posted on Michael Collins Dunn’s blog (which is one of my favorites incidentally) ...— Qifa Nabki